Collectible Volvo P1800 '61 TO '73

by Bob Hagin

May 29, 2001

The reason I always carry a small camera is that I never know when I
might spot an old friend in a parking lot. A few weeks ago, I came
across an early '60s Volvo P1800 sports coupe and the car touched off a
minor flood of memories.

When Volvo came to this country with is sturdy and practical cars in
1956, it quickly established a reputation of being a no-nonsense company
that was a more into safety than esthetics. Its initial offering was the
PV 444 two-door fastback sedan that was a dead-ringer for the Ford Tudor
sedan of 1946. It used unibody construction (a relatively rare feature
at the time) and a smallish four-cylinder engine that proved to be
surprisingly powerful for its size. The only other family cars of
similar size sold here were also foreign and the Volvo was quite capable
of running rings around any of them.

Then Volvo finally went upscale with the totally restyled 122S
"Amazon" sedan in 1960 (a car reported to be inspired by the 1955
Chrysler 300). It wasn't too surprising, but when the conservative
Swedish company sprung its P1800 on the American public a year later, it
was quite a shock. It was as low as any of the then-current crop of
sports cars and a great deal more "sexy." It had a Porsche-like coupe
body with a protruding Ferrari-like snout. It was high-waisted and its
tall rear fenders carried the body line back to a pair of embryonic tail
fins. It was definitely not typically Volvo.

I was working as a mechanic for a Sunbeam/Volvo dealer at the time
and was taken by the car's svelte lines that would compliment its
mechanical toughness and reliability. I was pretty well resigned to the
quality of the British cars I had to work on and was looking forward to
dealing with happy Volvo sports car customers in addition to the already
pleased Volvo sedan buyers. What I didn't know at the time was that
although the running gear for the car was produced in Sweden, the bodies
were built and assembled in England, and its body integrity was no
better than the Sunbeam.

The P1800 was the brainchild of Gunnar Engellau, the then-new head
man at Volvo. He wanted a glamorous two-seater coupe that would draw
world-wide attention to his somewhat parochial Scandinavian company and
towards this end, he enlisted the services of the merged Italian design
houses of Ghia and Frau to come up with two proposals each.

This they did but at the last minute, a fifth design was slipped
into the mix, one done by Pele Petterson, a former student of Ghia chief
Luigi Serge, and whose father, Helmer, had been in on the design of the
122S a few years before. Apparently it created something of an
international brouhaha, it was finally resolved that the Petterson
design was chosen but that the detail work would be done by Ghia and
Frau.

Unfortunately there wasn't enough production capacity at the Volvo
factory in Gothenburg to build the car, so the company went over the
North Sea and had the bodies built at the Pressed Steel plant in
Scotland and assembled by Jensen Motors, Limited, in England. A simple,
straightforward business arrangement in the corporate mind of Volvo, but
what the pragmatic Swedes hadn't counted on was the adversarial posture
between British management and labor. Those first P1800s were of such
abysmal quality that by 1963, after 6000 sub-standard cars went out on
the market, Volvo shoe-horned the assembly aspect of the car into its
Swedish factory where Volvo quality was assured and the Volvo reputation
for quality rescued. The cars built in Sweden received a small "S"
medallion on their trunk lift-overs and contrary to the popular legend
that it stands for "Sport," the truth is that it stands for "Sweden" to
differentiate the Swedish-built cars from ths earlier ones assembled by
Jensen. Jensen continued to make the bodies themselves until 1970.

During its 12-year lifespan, the Volvo P1800 evolved only slightly.
The original 1.8-liter four cylinder engine was enlarged by another 200
cubic-centimeters. The Spartan and usually lipstick-red interior was
softened with more posh bucket seats and more sedate colors. I was
working for a Datsun/Volvo dealer in a different town when the last
significant (albeit small) changes were made and its designation changed
to P1800E. The E signified that the British SU carburetors had been
supplanted by Bosch fuel injection and disc brakes with aluminum wheels
had been fitted all around. In our store, the dated P1800E had the
difficult task of competing on the showroom floor for buyers alongside
the then-new Datsun 240Z, which had more power, a more contemporary body
style and sold for nearly $1000 less. It was an unfair fight.

The curtain was called on the P1800 in 1973 by which time a
hatchback model, the P1800ES, had been added. Ironically, the current
Volvo "safety-concept car" being displayed around the world bears an
eerie resemblance to the vintage hatchback P1800ES when viewed from the
rear.

I like to think that the spirit of Pele Petterson was hovering
around the Volvo design studio when its safety-concept car was the
getting it final touches.

The following titles and media identifications are trademarks
owned by The Auto Channel, LLC and have been in continuous use
since 1987: The Auto Channel, Auto Channel and TACH all have
been in continuous use world wide since 1987, in Print, TV,
Radio, Home Video, Newsletters, On-line, and other interactive
media; all rights are reserved and infringement will be acted
upon with force.